You don't actually need any eqipment or even maths to work this out - you just need to look out to sea when a ship is arriving on a clear day. The mast & sails come into view over the horizon before the bow & then the rest of the hull. All of which slowly come into view. It's not rocket science to work out that it appears to be comeing over a curved surface.

This is as close as it comes for a geek, anyway. I'm going to bet on a physics revolution overthrowing the Standard Model just because it's long overdue, and because it would be fun, and because maybe now we can get a spare few billion for more research (but then, if true, we sure are going to need them!).

This is the great thing about science & scientists - I'll bet the majority of us want those neutrinos to be going faster than light, even the ones who are trying to find mistakes, because wholesale revolution of scientific consus is *fun* - specially in physics. Just think of the possibilities if we have inadvertantly found a way of FTL communication; good times...

I bet you personally aren't paying for shit, but receiving some government subsidy one way or another and just want others to pay for everything.

I'm gainfully employed and pay my taxes; I'm happy for a portion of those taxes to fund this project - what more do you expect from me?

As to my comments, they are general in nature,

As were mine; I'm quite happy for my taxes to fund fundamental scientific research that has no commercial merit, but expands our understanding of the way the universe works as the private sector has no incentive to do so. Another good example of this type of research is the LHC at CERN. Indeed, I would like a higher proportion of my taxes to go towards scientific endeavour, and less towards things like (for example) over-budget, under performing government IT systems.

What I accept with much less enthusiasm is government spending on it or anything, actually.

From your other posts, I assume you're in the US, so it's not your government spending the money - it's mine. Thanks for your concern, but I'm happy for them to do so as I think fundemental science research, such as this, is an area that government should fund due to the lack of economic incentive.

"This is just catching up to the state of the art of the mid 90s, when people started (perfectly reasonably) ripping unencrypted cds to their hard drives. These people are now no longer criminals."

Just to nit pick. They are making the action legal in the future. However all of us that have done so in the past and might well do so again before the law comes into effect are still filthy criminals. We broke the law and we could technically still be arrested and prosecuted for it even after the law comes into effect.

Not really, this is a civil matter so you'd have to be sued by the BPI (UK equivilent of RIAA) - and even they think that format shifting should be legal: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7299505/Millions-of-iPod-fans-breaking-law-by-copying-CDs.html
Note the last paragraph " we have never taken any action against consumers who rip CDs to computers or portable music players. Nonetheless, we do believe it would be better for personal CD ripping to be legal and the industry has made proposals to Government to achieve that." As they want to legalise format shifting as well, I don't think they're about to sue you for it.

I am not trying to be a pessimist here, but I would think there is some small loophole in the new law, that would give the British equivalent of RIAA or MPAA some leverage. Anyone knows anything about this ?

I would doubt it. If its currently illegal, they would have sued 90% of the UK population by now for breaking it. Anyone who owns an MP3 player would almost certainly be guilty.

Yeah, even the BPI realises that format shifting being against the law is stupid:

"In practice, we have never taken any action against consumers who rip CDs to computers or portable music players. Nonetheless, we do believe it would be better for personal CD ripping to be legal and the industry has made proposals to Government to achieve that.”

It most certainly wasn't day one when NoTW closed - this scandal has literally been going on years - an NoTW employee & a private investigator were jailed a couple of years back because of it. No one was paying much attention until it was found they had been hacking a dead girl's phone; at that point there was a lot of public pressure on advertisers who then started to pull out of the NoTW one by one at which point News International decided to call it quits as they had wanted to turn the sun into a 7 day operation anyway...

they have no credibility as a news source since they never say "This is the news, this is actually happening." They have never made any -false- statements about the current events, but they haven't made any true statements about current events either. If they have any credibility as a news source for that,

They have credibility because they at least admit they're making stuff up. It's like art, they reveal a larger truth by showing falsehoods. That's why they have credibility. Other news organisations just make stuff up and pretend it's some how newsworthy.

In contrast to not knowing what I'm paying for, I know the the NHS has given me access to some of the best doctors in the world - that's not hyperbole, either. I've been epileptic since age 9 - around age 15 I had brain surgery at Great Ormond St. Children's Hospital - the surgeon told me they do about twelve of the type of operation he performed per year. Ultimately, I continued having fits but I recently saw that surgeon being interviewed on a TV documentary about the Human brain after he'd performed complex surgery on a newborn baby. These are the calibre of people employed by the NHS

Whatever's wrong with my genetics has also given me other (possibly, possibly not related) conditions - I have the doctors stumped, the folks at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery are currently using cutting-edge techniques to analyse my mitochondrial DNA (from blood samples); the consultant jokingly told me not to tell anyone they were doing this because the research is so new (I'm still waiting on results). Wealthy Sheiks pay hundred's of thousands of pounds to get in to these hospitals as private patients (seriously, they take private patients in the very same Hospitals, with the same doctors!) - I get it through just paying my taxes. I don't think any realistic level of insurance in the USA would give me the care I've received on the NHS.

You wouldn't have to.
For the same amount of money your government is already spending, you could have a universal health care system and still have private insurance available to anyone who who wishes it - that's the system here in the UK, and from looking at people quoting health insurance prices,it seems even our private health insurance is cheaper than yours...

The USA already spends more money per capita on health care than other western with universal coverage systems - no extra money is needed, just reallocation of existing funds; a quick google throws up this bar chart.

WTF? I live in the UK, basic private health insurance is cheaper than that here even though almost no one buys it. ~£250/month is stupid money; are you paying for gold plated toilets or something?

The funniest thing about private vs public health care is that the same doctors work in both. When I was a kid, my dad had private health insurance through his job. The doctor that saw me and surgeon that removed my adenoids split their time between the private hospital that I was in, and the NHS Hospital that was literally over the road. The only benefit of the BUPA hospital was the luxurious hotel room instead of the ward I'd have been in in the NHS hospital - the doctors would have been exactly the same. Many senior doctors do this and a lot of private hospitals are built near NHS ones for this very reason.